


A Finger on Stitched Lips

by caprizant



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Quadrant Confusion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-27
Updated: 2013-08-13
Packaged: 2017-11-17 03:30:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/547154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caprizant/pseuds/caprizant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's so hard to know how you feel about someone, when you can't sort out your feelings on your own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kimoi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimoi/gifts).



Behind his polished visor, Mituna Captor closed his eyes. The trick, Latula had told him, was to visualize the stunt in its entirety before ever putting his feet on the skateboard. With the tail of his board resting on the ground and the front wheels propped against the stair rail, he imagined himself grinding smoothly down the length of the staircase. About halfway down the rail, he’d stopped imagining himself and started imagining Latula doing the trick instead. He knew his matesprit’s body just as well as his own. Physical eyes still closed, he licked his lips as the imagined Latula tensed her legs to ollie out of the grind into a kickflip, mentally leering at the tightening muscles in her memorized ass.   
  
He rewound his imagination and remembered her ass one more time.  
  
Nodding, he opened his eyes and leapt into action, mounting up on his board as he slid the trucks onto the rail. He held out his arms, putting his body into the same motions he’d visualized Latula doing.  
  
Mituna was not Latula. The sound of truck against rail made him grit his teeth, his knees locking up stiffly. He winced, tipping backwards, skateboard sliding right out from under him. He tried to bring his hands up to tuck and roll into the fall, but his arms twitched and jerked uncontrollably. His palms scraped against the steps as he tumbled painfully down, his helmet sounding a repeated _THWAK THWAK THWAK_ against the back of his head. Scared and scrambling, he stuck his leg out and wrapped his knee against one of the rail’s supports, succeeding in stopping his fall at the price of twisting his ankle. Uncomfortable as his position was, he let himself lay there for a while, shaking the dizziness out of his head. Sharp teeth chewed at his lip as he looked down. He was maybe a third of the way down the staircase, and could not see his skateboard at the bottom. He looked around for it and saw that it was still further up; it had landed upside down, and he had fallen without it.  
  
He stood up slowly, wincing at the heat in his knees and palms —he’d find mustard scrapes later, under his clothing — and walked carefully up to retrieve his board. Frowning, looking around to make sure no one had seen him, he knelt under the rail and walked down the stairless, grassy slope to the bottom of the hill. He was in a park of some sort — he wasn’t sure whose memory this was. The area felt alien and unreal, but then, nothing had actually felt very real to him in quite some time. His shoulders hung as he walked, and he glared angrily at his skateboard. For a moment, he considered throwing it, punching it, breaking it in half across his knee. But even if he destroyed the board, he’d just remember up a new one soon. The things here were more indestructible than he was; they never stopped being things. Mituna had never felt more like an object.  
  
He walked with his head down, not paying attention to where he was going. He paid just enough attention to make sure he walked around trees instead of into them. The grass bent gently under his feet, so it was a surprise to hear a sudden, scraping crunch as he walked around another tree.  
  
“Mituna!” Someone didn’t sound happy. No one was ever happy with him, honestly. He kept walking. “Mituna!” he heard again, and realized the sound was really, and now. He looked behind him. Aranea had been sitting under the tree, reading some book he didn’t care about, and next to her was a collapsed cardboard booth, waiting to be used. He had walked right over it, wrinkling its walls and smearing the paint of its sign. Aranea had a cross look on her face, still seated on the ground with her cheeks flushed an exasperated blue.  
  
He didn’t want to talk to her. He didn’t want to talk to anyone. But she was looking straight at him, and she had seen him see her, so it was too late to pretend he hadn’t noticed. He sighed, mouth twitching slightly, and waited for her to stand and walk over to scold him.  
  
He apologized — or at least he meant to, but Aranea didn’t seem to understand what he was trying to say. Later, he wouldn’t be able to recall what words he had used either, so it’s possible he never even got around to the actual apology part. Who knows? Does it matter? He threw his skateboard on the ground and walked away, walked right out of that memory and into another. The press of grass under his feet turned into the clacking of cobblestone, and he was back on Prospit in his own bedroom.  
  
He looked out the window, over the fools’-gold castle walls. The planet was deserted; whoever’s memory or memories of Prospit had come together to bring him here, they hadn’t bothered remembering the Prospitians. From the tower, he could see clear streets and empty towers blending together into a lemony slurry, all the way to Skaia, looming menacingly large over the horizon, so close he tried to touch it. His fingers spasmed as he stretched out his arm, catching his eye and distracting him from the checkerboard planet. His own hand filled his vision, still in pain from his fall. The yellow of his gloves blended in with the landscape ahead of him, and he felt invisible. Only the black line of his arm stood apart. Slowly, he lowered his hand, and saw more black beyond it. The streets were no longer empty. Kurloz was standing there.  
  
Mituna took a moment to make sure Kurloz was really there, that his brain wasn’t playing tricks on him; as soon as he was sure, he turned and ran for the door, racing down the stairs of the tower as fast as he could without falling. By the time he’d gotten to the door and exited the tower, the scene had changed — instead of Prospit being on the other side of the door, he stepped out onto the beach of Beforus, near where Kurloz had lived. It had been even longer since he’d stood there, but Kurloz hadn’t changed, still standing the same way he had been on Prospit, his stitched lips turned upward in a smile that seemed almost hopeful. Slowly, Kurloz raised his hand and signed hello.  
  
He hated how Kurloz made him feel. He didn’t want or need pity from anyone. He just wanted everyone to understand what he had done for them, what he had given up. Kurloz knew; Kurloz was there. But Kurloz couldn’t tell anyone else about it. Mituna knew that wasn’t Kurloz’s fault, but still, he wished...  
  
If he was honest, Mituna would admit that he pitied Kurloz, too. His feelings may have vacillated over the years, but they were here, and now, and Mituna was oh so tired, and more and more he looked at Kurloz with feelings that were becoming solidly pale.  
  
“Hey,” he said without enthusiasm. Kurloz made another sign. Mituna had never learned Troll-American Sign Language back on Beforus, but after everything that had happened he had made an attempt to learn, so that he could tell Kurloz how much the shared events in their life meant to him. His first conversation was a disaster. Mituna just didn’t have the motor control left to make the signs correctly; his fingers would twitch or his wrist would betray him. He felt like his hands had Tourette’s. The more he tried to tell Kurloz how he felt, the more Mituna would say the wrong things by mistake; the more he tried to invest in learning the language, the more he hated himself. Mituna didn’t have the energy left to hate anyone else.  
  
Kurloz made the same sign again, more insistent; he frowned sadly. “Oh. What’s wrong?” Kurloz nodded. Mituna put his hand on his forehead, drumming his fingers against his helmet in thought. “I don’t know, Kurloz, nothing and everything, I got to, had a, look, what even _matters_ , nothing, go, away.” His eyes stung and his vision started to blur. He closed them. “Cockshit, dammit, I feel like a faggot, go _away_ why the fuck are you even _here_...”  
  
In the darkness, Mituna felt warmth against his chest and a pressure closing around his shoulders that he didn’t understand. His head slowly stopped swimming; after a few seconds he felt a dizziness lift that he hadn’t even realized was there. He opened his eyes. Kurloz had given him a sign he could understand, a sign Mituna could actually make himself. Closing his arms around Kurloz’s back, Mituna returned the hug. Kurloz leaned back, looked Mituna in the face, and nodded. Taking Mituna’s hand in his own, Kurloz turned and began walking along the shore. The two trolls walked in silence for a while, fingers entwined as both of their memories recreated the Beforan sky.  
  
Mituna remembered walking under this sky before, remembered a time before Skaia had ruined their lives, and as he walked, remembering the crunch of sand, he felt like himself again. He stopped walking and looked out along the water, watching the tide come in; he felt a reassuring hand on his shoulder. Mituna gave Kurloz a nervous smile, then sat down, removing his helmet. He ran a gloved hand through his hair, wondering if he should say anything.  
  
Kurloz made a sign, flapping his hand. “What’s that mean?” Mituna asked. Kurloz pointed at his stitched mouth, then at Mituna’s, and flapped his hand again. “You want to talk?” Kurloz poked Mituna’s chest. “You want me to talk?” The other troll nodded. Mituna chewed slightly on his lip. “But what about you?”  
  
Kurloz cupped Mituna’s cheek, brushing fingertips against his earlobe, and moved his other hand to tap his own ear.  
  
“I’ll talk, you’ll listen.”  
  
Stitched lips smiled from ear to ear.  
  
“But what about?”  
  
The hand on his cheek slid up and down. Kurloz was papping him. The other hand came up, and Kurloz brushed a finger against Mituna’s lips. Mituna furrowed his brow in confusion for a moment, then understood what the sign meant.  
  
“Shooooosh?” he asked. Kurloz papped his cheek in response. Mituna smiled slowly. “Shooooosh.” As Kurloz continued touching his face, Mituna reached out and traced his finger along Kurloz’s lips in the same way, running carefully along the stitches and feeling them through his glove. “Shooooosh.”  
  
Mituna shooshed, and Kurloz papped, the two trolls holding up each other’s short comings, working as one — all the strength of any one troll, and all the heart of two. Mituna opened his mouth to speak, and realized his head was clear. He did not know yet what he would say, but he knew it would come out exactly the way he wanted.


	2. Chapter 2

If ghosts can sleep and dream, then Mituna woke up with his head in Kurloz’s lap, the highblood running his fingers through Mituna’s hair. He could not remember the last time he had slept so peacefully, so free of nightmares. He didn’t even remember nodding off.  
  
If ghosts can neither sleep nor dream, then instead Kurloz’s touch had snapped him back to awareness. Mituna was used to his head buzzing, a planet’s worth of cares and anxieties weighing on his mind without a moment’s peace. But here and now, he felt so at ease in his own head that he had gotten lost in the quiet. No need to worry, no need to even think.  
  
Either way, when Mituna opened his eyes and saw Kurloz looking down on him, he smiled and reached up to brush his finger along the stitched lips. “Shoosh,” he whispered to himself, and then louder, “hey there.”  
  
Kurloz smiled in response. Mituna let his hand linger near Kurloz’s cheek, looking intently at the line of stitches as it passed under his finger. Kurloz raised an eyebrow, his smile turning into a smirk. “Sorry,” Mituna said, realizing himself. Kurloz waved his hand dismissively, then gently but firmly removed Mituna’s hand from his face and laid it against his chest. He gave the hand a rough squeeze and then a soft stroke before letting go. Mituna kept his hand in place, feeling guilty. “I’m sorry I’ve been avoiding you,” he said after a moment. Kurloz cocked his head, waiting for more. Mituna still didn’t know what to say.   
  
Kurloz went back to stroking his hair. Mituna was grateful for it; somehow it helped him find the words. “It’s just that you were the only one there when, you know, and I didn’t want to bring the memory back up.” Kurloz frowned slightly, and stroked Mituna’s forehead, pulling his hair out of the way and massaging the scalp of his hairline. “The brain damage, yeah.” Kurloz frowned deeper, and pointed a finger at himself, tapping his chest. “No,” Mituna said, “I don’t blame you at all. I know it wasn’t your fault.” Kurloz pointed at his own mouth, then tapped Mituna’s chest. Mituna didn’t understand, and said so. Kurloz touched Mituna’s forehead again, then pointed at himself, then repeated pointing to his mouth and then at Mituna.  
  
Mituna ventured a guess. “You don’t blame me for your wound either?” Kurloz nodded, looking expectant. “I wasn’t even there, I couldn’t help you.” Kurloz nodded again, more firmly. “You know I would have if I could, I wish there was some way I could have been there for you.” Mituna blinked. “Oh, I get it. And you wish you could have saved me, too.”   
  
Kurloz tapped his face. _On the nose_.  
  
“I know you would have. But that’s not what I meant, though. It’s not that I don’t like to remember it, myself. I can’t forget it. I have to deal with it every moment, every time I try to talk to anyone else or even think a single damn thought to myself. No, Kurloz, for me it’s fucking inescapable, and I deal with it. Mostly. I was avoiding you because....” Mituna swallowed. “Because I don’t want you to remember it.” He pulled himself up to look into Kurloz’s empty eyes. “Do you remember how powerful I was?”   
  
Kurloz’s expression was unreadable as he nodded.  
  
“So does everyone else! They remember me being strong and able to take care of my fucking self, and then I came back to them and I was already broken.” Mituna smirked, looking down at the ground to hide his face. “That’s fine, I don’t care. They can think what they want about me. But you were the only one there, you were the only one who actually saw me break. And I wish you’d forget it.” He sighed deeply and closed his eyes. “I don’t want you to see me, because I want you to remember me how I was before, instead.”  
  
He felt Kurloz’s hand under his chin, lifting his head to look Kurloz back in the face. There was no judgment there, though he actually wished there had been. “I hate you,” he said, not at all sure whether he meant it or not. “I hate that you always find a way to make me honest. I hate being honest.” That much was true, at least. Mituna wished he could save these feelings and process them at a time when Kurloz wasn’t around. Maybe he’d try talking to Latula about it.   
  
Kurloz’s hand moved from Mituna’s chin and rested on his shoulder. Since Mituna was already being honest, he had to admit it felt good. He covered the hand with his own. Kurloz held up a finger questioningly before him. Mituna caught himself smiling, and nodded, leaning forward and offering his lips to be shooshed. He closed his eyes and pretended they were still alive for a moment, minds and bodies intact on Beforus and still finding reasons to spend time together that didn’t involve just feeling sorry for each other.  
  
“You can’t fix me, you know.” Kurloz actually _chuckled_ , a tongueless rumbling sound deep in his chest that seemed to go through his whole body. Mituna could feel the laugh right in Kurloz’s hands. Kurloz leaned forward and kissed Mituna softly, pressing stitched lips to scarred forehead, touching wound to wound. Mituna understood, felt the message coursing through him.  
  
 _You can’t fix me, either, so don’t even try._


	3. Chapter 3

Elsewhere, in another time, life, universe, and place, the pounding roar of unquiet engines sent shudder after shudder through the helmsman’s body. The apparatus fastened to his head trapped the beads of yellow-tinted sweat underneath, itching his skin and irritating his eyes. A lesser man would have been lost in the pain by now, been unable to feel the tight pain in his arms and legs from the force of the trauma. A lesser mind would have splintered and cracked and jammed, unable to sustain the focus and clarity of thought needed to power the ship.  
  
The helmsman wished he were a lesser man.

  
= = = = = = = = = = =

  
Latula walked around the memory of Beforan trees, skateboard under her arm. No matter what people may have said about her, she wasn’t too cool to use her own feet; every girl needs to walk sometimes, right? Besides, the wheels wouldn’t have done too well on the leaves and grass. She looked around with trained eyes, straining her ears to pick up the sound of scent. She was sure Mituna had come this way. Her preternatural senses picked up an awkward crunch of leaves not far away. Worried Mituna might have fallen and was struggling to get up, Latula sprinted over.  
  
She frowned when she got there and realized it wasn’t him. She found Aranea instead, fussing about on the ground, trying to repair her booth. Composing herself, Latula faked a smile. “Yo, girl! What’s up? Or down, I mean.”  
  
Aranea eyed Latula with something like suspicion. “I’m just trying to do some damage control.” She rose up and indicated the booth tearing beneath her, the front of her dress smeared with dirt and fading paint.  
  
Latula nodded like she understood. “You seen Mituna around?”  
  
The blue-blood looked around, a strange expression on her face until she regained composure. “He’s the one who stepped on my booth while I was making it.” She held a hand to her temple and shook her head. “Maybe I should just start over.”  
  
“Hey look, I need to find him, alright?” It wasn’t necessarily as urgent as that, but Aranea seemed dangerously expectant, like she wanted Latula to ask more about whatever she was working on, and Latula doubted even she could fake a smile for that long. “Which way did he go?”  
  
Aranea looked over her shoulder. Latula went that direction, barely remembering to look back and wave to Aranea. Serket looked peeved, but it was in her nature to help. Latula would make it up to her later, if she really had to.  
  
The trees were beginning to grow hazy, telling Latula that she was nearing the edge of the bubble. She wondered which memory she was heading into, and hoped that if Mituna had wandered into it, that it was one he knew how to navigate.  
  
She didn’t have to worry. At the edge of the park, offering a transition into the next memory, were the familiar walls of Mituna’s hive. She moved her skateboard underneath her other arm and walked up to the door. Mituna’s custom lock was over the entrance, sealing the door beneath a fully alphanumeric keyboard instead of the more usual 9-number panel. She smoothed her hair and entered the password by heart: 7177135. To her surprise, the panel buzzed angrily at her that the password was incorrect. She adjusted her glasses in thought, searching her memory for what the password had been back when she first met Mituna, before he’d started changing it regularly. After a moment, she had it, and smiled at the thought as she entered P455WORDFDFRFD. The door chimed — a recording of Mituna’s laugh — and opened for her.  
  
The bubble inside was not Mituna’s hive as she remembered it. Oh, it was his respite block, sure, but then it wasn’t; everything otherwise familiar to Latula had a sense of wrongness about it, from the game consoles to Mituna’s pre-accident nude sketches on his desk to the poster of Troll Chad Muska on the wall. There was something off and subtle, like discoloration. She moved to the window and saw the rows of bleak, abandoned purple towers before her. This was the respite block for one of Mituna’s dream selves.  
  
Latula had never liked Derse. While she had never actually smelled it with her own nose, everything else about it was so inverse that she assumed it had to be the opposite of the sweet scents she had loved on Prospit. In her mind, Derse smelled bitter, and dank, and rotten, and those Dersite carapaces she’d encountered during the course of the session had done nothing to change that opinion. Even before the accident, Mituna had never volunteered much information about his life on Derse, not even when she asked; afterwards any mention of the name seemed to so especially upset him that she dared not even ask anymore. She wondered why he had come here, and if he was even now wandering the memory of the planet. She did not relish the thought of having to go look for him.  
  
Behind her, the door whooshed open, startling her. She turned and saw Mituna walking in, looking surprised to see her. She quickly put on a brave face for him, smiling widely. If Derse was still upsetting Mituna, for whatever reason, she was prepared to be strong for both of them, or at least to fake it until she actually was.  
  
“Hey, boy,” she said, working a flirty tone into her voice. “Where were you?”  
  
“Prospit,” Mituna answered slowly, through his teeth. He was confused; both Latula and this room were familiar sights, but he had never put them together before. He took a step forward. She was looking at him, and he realized she wanted more. “Was in my block on Prospit,” he offered, “but was worried someone would find me. No one remembers I had a block here, too.” He moved to look out the window, standing beside her. “Easier to hide here.”  
  
“Why are you hiding?” she asked, putting a hand on his shoulder.  
  
“Thinking. Or _fuck_. Trying to.”  
  
“About what?” He shook his head. She squeezed his shoulder softly. He was on a downswing; he’d be up again soon enough, and she’d try asking him then. But then he covered her hand with his, a good sign. “Do you want to talk about it?”  
  
“No,” he said flatly, almost distracted. She wiggled her hand out of his grasp and moved behind him, reaching to gently remove the helmet. Droplets of sweat dotted his hair like honey, exertion from their skateboarding earlier having been trapped under the helmet all this time. He turned to look at her. For all the damage to his mind, his face was as handsome as ever, and she tried desperately to recall a time when his smile had been carefree. His mouth was twisted in frustration, now, his eyes darting as though they were being watched. She wished she could see into his mind, if he couldn’t find the words. But they had other ways to communicate, and she watched his eyes turn down to glance at her body.  
  
With an athlete’s reflexes, he was on his knees and biting her left rumble sphere, his sharp teeth sinking right through her clothing and into the flesh on her chest. She gasped slightly at first, but he seemed to need it, so she cradled his head against her as his tongue dampened the fabric of her suit. He began shrugging off his clothes, and she did the same, pushing against him to move him down towards the floor. She collapsed on top of him, but he would have none of that, rolling to be on top as her glasses slipped from her face. He threw her loosed clothing off to the side, and leaned to lick her shoulder as she stroked the muscles on his back.  
  
She was sad Mituna rarely had the words to tell her what he was thinking, these days, but he had always communicated to her better with his body. When the two of them touched, there wasn’t really much need for words either way.  
  
To all her senses, the room exploded into a carnival of light, as though every wall of the chamber was decorated with all the colors of the hemospectrum.


	4. Chapter 4

Solar winds buffeted the ship. Space was anything but empty; the soundless fury of gravity and particles pulled at the ship from every direction, and every speck of dust that contacted the hull was a fresh spike of pain in the helmsman’s brain. Sheer force of will kept the ship on course through the storm, but the ride was anything but smooth.

The sound of sliding metal told him the door was opening. His eyes were open; indeed, he could never close them. The strain on his muscles left him unable to focus his vision on anything but quick flashes of color, and so he felt rather than saw the hands brushing his face. Long nails, too glamorous to be claws but too sharp to be anything else, cut at his skin, a trickle of gold on silver.

“I need you to keep this ship from rocking,” came the ship’s master’s voice. “You can do that for me, can’t you?”

= = = = = = = = = = =

Mituna had escorted Latula back out of the memory, seeing her safely off of Derse. What was left of the planet was less dangerous than it had been when it was alive and actual, but it was more disturbing than ever. Even the other Derse dreamers didn’t come back here often, letting Mituna have a rare bit of solitude. To his eyes, Prospit wasn’t any cheerier.

He hadn’t bothered putting on his clothes since Latula left, standing naked and alone in the block. The layout -- shaped like the left half of the Doom symbol -- included a wide, round window he could look out of from his recuperacoon. He sat on the sealed bottom of the ‘coon and looked up at the empty sky. The real Derse, at nighttime, had a much more exciting view than the memory of Derse had, and on Derse it was _always_ nighttime. But none of the Derse dreamers had spent much time looking up, not even him. Without those memories, the bubble couldn’t fully capture the dark planet’s glory.

It didn’t feel right, or perhaps it didn’t feel wrong enough?

The clarity of mind caused by the orgasm was fading. Colors at the edge of his vision were starting to dance, his brain working overtime to tackle every problem one, three, four times over.

Dickshit.

He pulled his clothes back on, which didn’t really smell of sex at all (he laughed at the pun of Latula having no smell). He pulled the helmet firmly over his hair, blanketing the world in comfortable blues and reds. He gripped his skateboard tightly, looking again out the window. An idea came to him, and he decided to act on it before thinking too hard and having it get noisy inside his head, whispers toward one action or another. He needed to keep his head clear.

He raised one leg, putting his foot up on his desk.

Then leapt out the window.

The world became a spinning haze of purple. He gritted his teeth as he sailed forward, holding the skateboard out in his hand and waiting to put it under his feet until just. The right. Moment.

Purple suddenly exploded into whites and greens as his momentum carried him right out of the bubble. The impact shuddered up through the wheels on the board and into his legs, and he whooped. The front wheels hit grass, though, and he didn’t move forward with as much speed as he’d hoped. Slowly, he skittered to a stop, frowning down at the ground. Make no mistake, it was a pretty sweet jump, he thought, he just wanted to follow it up with something a little more badass. Not like anyone was around to see, though. People were never around to see him do something cool, that’s just how it worked.

He kicked up the skateboard and threw it at a nearby rock in frustration. It bounced back, hitting him in the shin. He spat out a string of swears and bent over, then gave up and just flopped into the ground. He heard the sound of footsteps on grass, and then Meenah was standing over him, blocking out the Skaian light.

“Cool,” he said, smiling up at her, “I can see the bottom of your rumble spheres from this angle.”

She ignored the pass, shaking her head. “Cod dam, Captor,” she sighed, “Can’t you even fall right?”

He just leered up at her, smiling, admiring her belly button until she got tired of judging him and walked away. He closed his eyes, feeling a fresh wave of brain problems take advantage of his pause on the ground. With a sigh, he opened his eyes and stared at the sky, letting them lose focus until he couldn’t see anything but red and blue. He swam in the feeling, a bit dizzy all of a sudden. With a start he realized someone was pulling his head up into their lap. He was about to say something before Kurloz’s finger brushed against his lips, quieting him. He lifted his visor to see a stitched smile, Kurloz’s hands slowly patting his face. With every stroke, another trouble seemed to fade, one by one until everything was quiet in his head again. He could even hear the wind, blowing through the trees.


End file.
